Provisional results of the survey on working conditions in the licensed letter service

The Federal Network Agency has evaluated the data collected so far in its
survey of licence holders on basic working conditions in the licensed letter
service and passed them on to the Advisory Council.

“These are provisional results with no real surprises”, Agency President,
Matthias Kurth, said. They show no significant deviation from the findings of
the study on working conditions in the letters market published last May by the
Bad Honnef consultancy WIK. Confirmed in particular was a clear gap in wage
levels, both between the old and the new federal states and between individual
groups of postal staff.

The evaluation currently shows the weighted average hourly wage for staff
employed by operators competing with Deutsche Post AG, depending on the
region, to vary from around six to 10 euros (national average EUR 8.30). The hourly
rates for letter delivery staff are also in this range. However, the national
average is lower at EUR 7.33.

In June 2007 the Agency sent out a questionnaire to some 1,500 licence holders
to collect data for an empirical study of wage levels, weekly working hours and
holiday entitlements. Despite initial legal problems regarding the scope of the
survey, 1,321 completed questionnaires have been received to date, a return rate
of around 87 percent. These companies, in turn, represent about 85 percent of
the postal staff employed by the competitors.

“Our survey brings greater clarity to the debate on working conditions in the
letters market. The Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, responsible
for the Employee Secondment Act, will thus have added data on which to base
its decision”, Kurth declared.

The postal competitors currently employ around 40,000 workers, according to
the survey as it stands. This figure will rise with receipt of the 200 or so still
outstanding questionnaires, completion of which is now being enforced by
means of penalties. Deutsche Post AG has 162,938 employees on its payroll,
122,437 of whom work in operations as delivery officers, sorters or drivers.
However, the Agency can only collect data on the numbers employed by
licensed postal operators. As, however, the licence holders make use of third
party services for which a licence is not required, the Agency has no data on
these numbers.